Fear Not

"But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee." ~Isaiah 43:1-3

I've loved these verses ever since I learned that someone put a tune to them so I could randomly pull them out of my head and start humming the tune. They hold such special meaning to the child of God.

Firstly, He created and formed us. Even in Psalms 139:13-15 and Jeremiah 1:5, it shows that He has a special hand in forming us as we are growing in our mother's womb.  He looked down at the Earth and decided that it needed one of us.  He wouldn't create something and then simply let it flounder around to figure things out for itself.  God has a special interest in making us the exact way and time that He does.  We may not know what His purpose is just yet, but as we follow His steps we will eventually.

Secondly, the only way we can be in sweet fellowship with Him is when we have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus. Thus, through being bought by His blood, we are His forever and rightly He calls us His own.  When we buy something with our own money, it is ours, just as we were bought with His blood.  Jesus didn't have to die for us though. He could have killed everyone and started over with a clean slate: a new species that was given no free will perhaps.  But He didn't.  God chose to die for sinful man so that we could be in fellowship with Him.  He could have created us to have no free will in the first place, but isn't it so much more meaningful when someone WANTS to do something rather than when they HAVE to do something?  Why wouldn't God want that same special relationship with us?

Thirdly, no matter what God lets us go through, we will never be alone.  He promises to always be there with us and protect us.  We may face trials where there is pain and we don't understand why the trial we are facing is happening, but God will NEVER give us more than we can handle with His strength.  It may be the toughest battle we've ever seen or been in, we may be beaten, bruised, and tired. We may not even be able to see the end, but just as Jesus was on the water with the disciples in the middle of the storm, so will He be with us.  All we need to do is call upon His name, place our worries, cares, and needs at His feet and He will hear us.  We may not feel immediate relief from the pain we are feeling, but He will bring peace into our lives that, in all reality, would not be there if it were not for Him.  It 's not natural to feel peace in the midst of a noisy battle or a devastating storm, yet when we are with the Master and relying on Him, we can feel such peace as no man has ever experienced on His own.  The only One who can calm the storms is waiting to calm yours.

Lastly, He has already promised us that the world will not win if we will only stand in His will.  He has defeated all the enemies of Israel over and over again.  Just as He protected the Israelites, so will He protect and defeat the enemies of all His children.  We may not even see all the enemies that He protects us from, and praise God for that.  Sometimes the enemies we face are difficult enough, if we had to face ALL the enemies that come our way, sometimes life would be questionable about whether there is anything good at all.  There is one who is always good, and that is God.

We may face hard times, and there may even be many moments where we don't understand why and feel neglected by God, but we need to remember that we are His and have been called out by name.  God will not forget His own and He will never leave us, nor forsake us.  He is always there, waiting to protect and guide us, His children, through every trial and situation that we may go through.  All that is required of us is to fully give Him our all.

Is there anything blocking your relationship with God?  Will you call upon Him today in your hour of need?